


Mutant Pillow Talk

by FloriaTosca



Series: Helix: Gods, Monsters, and the Rest of Us [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Banter, Board Games, Disabled Character, F/F, Female Friendship, Friendship/Love, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Implied Relationships, Literary Reference, Mutant, Slice of Life, Superheroes, Supervillains, inspired by x-men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2011-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-25 14:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloriaTosca/pseuds/FloriaTosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victoria and Galatea try to play go, but keep getting sidetracked by philosophical discussions.  As usual.  Inspired by Marvel Comics, but somehow I doubt Magneto and Professor X were ever this silly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutant Pillow Talk

Galatea's mattress was a little firmer than Victoria was used to, but since the bed was supporting a game of go and a full tea service, this was an advantage. Galatea sat propped up at the head of the bed, next to the go board, while Victoria sprawled at the foot of the bed with her tea.

“I'm not saying that changing a character's backstory in an adaptation is always some heinous crime against art,” Victoria said, “But creators need to be aware that these details can make a lot of difference in the emotional impact of the work. For instance, if Agamemnon killed Iphigenia in the backstory, then Clytemnestra had every right to stab him in the bathtub, and Elektra and Orestes need to suck it up and stop identifying with the patriarchy. But the issues are different if she's just skewering him out of general wifely frustration.”

Galatea sipped her tea and stared thoughtfully at the go board. “Hmm. I'm not sure I'd go that far. Whatever Agamemnon had done, it's not as if stabbing him would undo it, although no doubt he was a highly unsatisfactory husband. And what about Cassandra?” She picked up a black go piece and moved it. “Your turn.”

“Gala, if people in Greek tragedies worried about whether they were accomplishing anything constructive, the plays would be a lot shorter and have far less offstage stabbing.” Victoria refilled her tea and grabbed an oatmeal cookie from the platter on the bedside table. “If Oedipus hadn't succumbed to pedestrian road-rage, the whole story would have gone off the rails by the time he got to Thebes.”

“I never thought I'd see the day  _ you _ claimed that violence wasn't constructive,” Galatea said.  


“Excuse me!” Victoria protested. “I may not be a softhearted Quaker idealist like you, but some of what mythical characters get up to is just ill-advised and pointless.”

“Only some?” Galatea raised an eyebrow.

“Penelope was pretty smart,” Victoria said. She frowned at the go board, levitated one of the white stones with a twitch of her finger, and made her move.

“I wonder,” Galatea said, “why you never choose black. I think it would suit your play style.”

“Because only the white pieces are organic. Little chunks of polished black rock wouldn't let me do this.” Victoria levitated all the white pieces a few inches above the board, let them hover a moment, had the stones exchange places with each other in mid-air, and then returned them to their former positions.  
“Now that's just showing off!”  


“No, insolent mortal, that was but a taste of my true power!” Victoria grinned like a shark, and then added, in a less dramatic tone, “ _ This _ is showing off.” All the wooden furniture in the bedroom began to levitate, including the bed.  


Galatea giggled. “So, I'd better surrender or you'll forcibly rearrange my furniture?”

“You know it.” The bed floated a few inches higher.

“Hmm. I'll have to think about it. Would getting everyone together to take my nightstand out of a tree be more trouble than whatever it is you'll do to me if I capitulate?”

“Trust me. I can be... gracious in victory.” Victoria steepled her fingers and narrowed her eyes.

The effect was somewhat spoiled when Galatea burst out laughing.

“Good lord, Vick, do you really behave that way when you're villaining? What are you going to do next, ask me to join you so we can rule the world together?”

“I was going to ask you,” Victoria said crisply. “But if you're going to be that way about it, I suppose I shall have to resort to Plan B.”

“And what would that be?”

“You really think I'm going to tell you all the details of my evil plans after you so cruelly mock my offer of allegiance?” Victoria clasped a hand to her heart dramatically.

“It is traditional,” Galatea pointed out. “Or are you just covering for the fact that this 'Plan B' of yours doesn't even exist?”

“Well, I was considering just running off with you and hoping Stockholm Syndrome sets in before the people here catch up with us,” Victoria said, in a more normal tone of voice. “The window's too small to float the bed out, but we should be able to get your chair through, if it was folded up.”

“You have put way too much thought into this.”

“Sorry,” Victoria said, with a decidedly unapologetic smile. “You spend enough time on the run from the law, you start thinking a lot harder about things like exit routes. Besides, you're kind of asking for it, having a bedroom full of wood when your archnemesis is a biokinetic.” She made the floating wicker wastebasket give a little mid-air bob for emphasis.

“That doesn't even make any sense! And besides, Vick, you are not my enemy.” Galatea continued, “Bigotry is my enemy. Willful ignorance is my enemy. Paranoia, xenophobia – all that.”

“Don't forget stairs!”

“Yes, and stairs too,” Galatea sighed. “You, on the other hand, are a dear friend with whom I have had violent political disagreements on occasion. Hardly the same thing. And we're on the same side now, anyway.”

“Why, Professor Xiao, I didn't know you cared.” Victoria paused thoughtfully, and then continued, “But if your only enemies are abstract concepts and architectural features, how does Senator Fisher fit into your world view?”

“He presents a moral dilemma, I admit,” Galatea said. “I want him to stop catering to the paranoid fantasies of his constituency – even apart from the consequences for mutant rights, a lot of what he says just isn't supported by what information we currently have. He needs to stop referring to 'the mutants' as if we were some big scary fundamentally alien minority group of walking time bombs that has nothing in common with Real Americans. Other than that... well, I should want him to take up the path of rationality and common decency and get on with his life. But there's part of me that wouldn't be sorry if he got hit with a serious dose of poetic justice via public humiliation, I'm afraid.”

“That's nothing to be ashamed of,” Victoria said. “If it's poetic justice, then by definition he deserves it. It's not like you're hoping for his home state to be hit with plagues of locusts.” Victoria paused a moment, lost in thought. “Hey, I wonder how many plagues of Egypt I could recreate? Red tide I can do, critters I can do, the diseases are a matter of making the right bioweapon, Terry might be able to make a dust cloud for darkness. I think hail would be the most- HEY!” The bed lurched briefly, and Victoria glared indignantly at Galatea, who had just thrown a pillow at her head. “Watch the assault and battery! I'm only moving multiple large pieces of furniture here, nothing that requires concentration.” Galatea continued to look back at her, decidedly un-penitent. “Right. I'm a good guy now. No more plotting to recreate Biblical epics in order to smite my enemies.”

“I think sending plagues of gnats against your enemies is frowned upon, nowadays. Unless you're that guy in the Champions who can talk to bugs. I think when your team's saved Seattle three times you're allowed to be a little creepy,” Galatea said meditatively. “So maybe the gnats would be acceptable, but red tide and plagues of boils are right out.”

“I'll be sure to keep that in mind,” Victoria said dryly. “Cute plagues only. So, do you know where I can get a few hundred of those adorable venomous rainforest frogs?” Galatea's only answer was another pillow to the face, which broke Victoria's concentration and sent the room's furnishings plummeting.

“I think your control's slipping,” Galatea said. “I remember when you could hold ten Green Berets immobile and make an overly dramatic speech at the same time, while posing in just the right way to let your hair flow flatteringly in the breeze. You're really losing your touch, although I suppose it's inevitable at your advanced age.”

Victoria glowered, and muttered, “I'll show you who's old and decrepit,” before pouncing across the length of the bed toward Galatea. A split second before she made contact, Galatea attempted to parry with a Japanese buckwheat bolster and sent an image of a fruit bat with sunglasses and a cigarette holder into Victoria's head.

Victoria landed on her hands and knees, skidded to a halt, and looked at Galatea with an expression of almost sublime confusion. “Gala, why is that bat smoking?”

Before Victoria could explain the reference, the bedroom door swung open and a young red-haired woman barged in. “Professor!” she gasped. “We heard the thudding downstairs. Well, the ones who have good ears did. Is everything all right?” She paused in her questioning to take a breath and actually look at her surroundings, and noticed Galatea lying back against the headboard with a disheveled Victoria crouching over her. “What the HELL are you doing!” As she glared at Victoria, she began to take on a golden glow, and the room's temperature seemed to rise a degree or two.

“Why, engaging in elaborate sexual role-play scenarios,” Victoria said. “What does it _look_ like we're doing? Right now it's 'professor and retired supervillain,' although I think we'll be able to work in 'World War I veteran British aristocrat and lusty gamekeeper' after dinner if we don't have too many papers to grade.”

“It's all right, Amanda,” Galatea said. Amanda was turning various interesting colors under her golden glow. “We were just playing go and talking about Greek mythology, and it got a bit silly. I'm sorry we disturbed you.”

“Err, yes, glad to see you're all right, Professor. I guess I'll be going now!” Amanda turned around, walked briskly out of the room, closed the door behind her, and then rapidly jogged off towards some unknown destination.

“Where d'you think she's headed?” Victoria asked.

“Probably trying to find the brain bleach closet. Really, Victoria, did you have to troll her like that?”

“Look, she already thought I was doing something unspeakable to you, otherwise she wouldn't have acted like the disapproving mother who just found a boy in her daughter's bedroom in one of those old-fashioned teen melodramas.”

“I don't think it's quite that,” said Galatea. “She just distrusts you as a matter of principle. You could be washing dishes for Shoshi and she'd suspect your motives.” Galatea paused. “And really, Vick – 'World War I veteran British aristocrat and lusty gamekeeper?' Do you secretly write _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ slash fic in your spare time?”

“I never could get into D.H. Lawrence, actually,” Victoria said. “But when I was in college I had a few notebooks filled with drivel about my favorite tragic villains and antiheroes being Terribly Misjudged.”

“Really? You never told me. That is so cute! Were there tearful confessions of love?”

Victoria looked down, realized that, since she was still perched over Galatea, looking down had the exact opposite of the desired effect, and fixed her gaze on the headboard. “A few. But enough about my twisted mind. What was up with that bat?”

“Oh, that.” Galatea gave a self-deprecating slight chuckle. “Just a dumb little in-joke. 'We can't stop here, this is people country!'”

“Right, like Hunter S. Thompson.” Victoria rolled her eyes. “And people call you the sane one.”

“Hey, I'mnot the one who tried to hold our nation's capital hostage with weaponized kudzu. And get down from there, I'm sick of looking up your nose when I'm talking to you.”

“Well, aren't we particular.” Victoria complied, and sat down next to Galatea after moving the remains of their game of go to a bedside table. “And the kudzu idea was not insane! Just a bit overly ambitious.”

“If you say so.”

Victoria leaned back, turned toward Galatea, and asked, “Want to do something that'll really raise Amanda's blood pressure?”

“What, like faking our deaths in a freak meteorite strike and then traveling the world in search of spiritual enlightenment?”

“I was thinking more of a round of 'smartass psychics and the megalomaniacs who love them,' but that sounds like fun, too.”

“I think I like your idea,” Galatea said. “It sounds less strenuous.”

“'Less strenuous?' Should I be insulted?”

“What you should do,” Galatea said, “Is lock the goddamn door, and then get over here.”

“To hear is to obey, my lady,” Victoria said.

Galatea rolled her eyes. “Ah, if only that were really so.”

“Um, Gala?”

“What is it, Vick?”

“I'd have a much easier time getting up and locking the door if you let go of my sweater.”

“Well, if you insist,” Galatea sighed.


End file.
